A contributor to the IxDA discussion list posted about the availability on iTunes of Stanford University lectures in human-computer interaction.

I just browsed the list of lectures. Looks like real good stuff. Some lectures I’m particularly interested in hearing:

• The Design of Implicit Interactions, Wendy Ju, Stanford, Spring 2007
• Designing Interactions, Bill Moggride, IDEO, Winter 2007
• Innovation on User Research Methods During the Development of Windows Vista, Gayna Williams, Microsoft, Fall 2006

You can point your browser to this link to get to the class listings within iTunes.

Ars Technica is reporting that several patent reform advocacy groups have banded together to collaborate on the effort to abolish software patents.

Says Ars:

Supported by the Free Software Foundation, the Public Patent Foundation, and the Software Freedom Law Center, the End Software Patents (ESP) project aims to challenge the legal validity of patents that do not specify a physically innovative step. In addition to helping companies challenge software patents in the courts and in the patent office, the ESP project will also work to educate the public and encourage grass-roots patent reform activism in order to promote effective legislative solutions to the software patent problem.

This is an important effort, and one that UX professionals should support. As I described in my article a few months back in UXmatters, software patents do more harm than good. They stifle innovation rather than protect and nurture it. As I wrote in UXmatters:

The sad fact is that companies often file for and the US government actually grants patents for user interface and interaction design “innovations” that are either strikingly obvious or have appeared before in other systems—that is, when prior art exists, as someone in the field of intellectual property would say. This means, as user experience practitioners, we are at risk of litigation every time we design an application. Each time we fire up Visio or Photoshop, create a new design, then put it out into the world, there’s a good chance we’re infringing on someone’s patent.

I hope that those of you who are active in the user experience field will learn more about this issue and choose to stand with the ESP project. Even if you don’t agree with me (and them), it behooves you to learn more about the issue. It’s quite easy to ignore - until you find yourself staring down the barrel of an injunction or subpoena.

Patent Reform Coalition Aims to Abolish Software Patents

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Tags: patents, open source, law

As a member of Usability Professionals’ Association Board of Directors (and now President), I have been fortunate to be involved in the UPA’s user experience salary survey project. I actually wrote the 2005 report and just finished the 2007 report, the full version of which is now available to UPA members at this URL. (A free version is available to the entire UX community here.)

One thing we noticed back in 2005 was the marked difference in salaries between men and women in the UX field. In 2005 we found that the gender gap was about $8,500 USD: the median salary for men in the UX field was a bit more than 80K; for women, 72K. This finding got a bit of attention in the part of the blogosphere concerned with user experience.

We also found upon further analysis that the gender gap seemed to have narrowed slightly between 2000 (when UPA last did a salary survey) and 2005. But the gap narrowed by only $1,000 USD in those five years.

With the 2007 report in the can I am happy to announce two findings: One is that average and median salaries in the UX field increased since 2005. The average salary in 2005 was $78,466 (median = $75,000); in 2007 the average salary was $83,297 (median = $80,643), representing an increase of $4,831. (The median salary increased $5,643.)

The second finding is that the difference in average and median salaries between men and women has narrowed. The average salary for men increased $2,878 from late 2005 to late 2007; women’s average salary rose more than twice this amount, or $6,384. (Median salary for men increased $5,000; for women, $7,000.)

I am of course happy about this from the social justice perspective. And I have more personal reasons to be happy: my wife also works in the user experience field.

Over the last six days I have had the pleasure of traveling, presenting, and sightseeing in Beijing. The occasion was the User Friendly 2007 conference, where over 700 user experience professionals from around the world gathered to present and share with one another. It was another excellent and enjoyable event. As per most professional conferences, there were good presentations, a few outstanding presentations, and also a few less-than-good ones.

But by far the most enjoyable part was the hallway chatter - the impromptu conversations, informal gatherings, etc. Looking back, I realize that nearly every conversation I took part in eventually touched on how much energy and growth user experience is seeing in China and Asia Pacific. The UPA China chapter has leveraged this by recruiting young volunteers, often fresh out of school, to help organize and run chapter events and the UF conferences.

In return, the young volunteers are able to network with potential mentors and more experienced peers from in-country, as well as UX professionals from outside China. Clearly this is a golden opportunity for UX practitioners at the beginning of their careers. I would’ve loved to have had this opportunity when I was coming up.  

These are interesting times in the UX field. China and India are coming into their own. While most native people I meet who hail from and work in Asia Pacific are individual contributors or first-line managers, I fully expect that as UX becomes more integrated into the systems development life cycle processes I will meet more and more homegrown Directors, Senior Directors, and VP’s. The same progression has happened here in the US over the past 15 years. It is happening in these regions now. 

The real interesting thing I am seeing is that the the UX communities in Asia Pacific are not simply adopting the old methods and processes. They are adapting them, changing them, improving them. I can’t substantiate this with quantitative data, it’s more a combination of gut feel and some anecdotal data. I promise to explore this in future posts. For now, I’m content to just set it down here and pick up on it at a later date.  

There’s a good article on information architecture in the enterprise over at Boxes and Arrows. Written by James Robertson, it talks about how an IA has to work at different levels of analysis to be effective in an enterprise setting.

Quoting James:

In a typical web or design project, the information architect is given a task…the problem is known, and the challenge is to work out the best way to design the solution.

However, within the enterprise space, the problem to be solved is often not well understood. For example, information architects may be approached with ill-defined “problems� such as:

• Improve the effectiveness of the intranet
• Help call center staff to access required information
• Increase the uptake of the document management system
• Support sales staff with better online resources

The first task for the information architect in this context is to better understand the problem. Only then can an overall approach be defined, and the normal user-centered design process initiated.

In all, a good read. Full article at “Enterprise IA Methodologies.”

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Gerry Gaffney of UXPod fame posted a great interview with Karen Loasby of the BBC. The interview is from November; but I’m so scandalously behind in my reading/listening I’m just now getting around to it.

It’s worth a listen; it provides her unique perspective on what it’s like managing the information architecture for a major media web property. You can get the podcast here: UXpod - User Experience Podcast - Interview with Karen Loasby.

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Interesting article on how customers in the UK and EU evaluate potential user experience vendors: http://www.creativematch.co.uk/viewNews/?93407

It’s always nice to see our colleagues in neighboring disciplines talk about usability. Here’s an article from PM Toolbox that, although brief and a bit simplistic, at least shows that our colleagues understand the value of a well-designed user experience.

Oh. My. God. Amazon.com actually updated the price of “Usability Success Stories“.

Maybe some peeps will buy it now…

I just noticed that the article I wrote for UXMatters.com was published yesterday. The title of the article is “Connecting Cultures, Changing Organizations: The User Experience Practitioner As Change Agent.” Quoting myself:

As UX professionals, we have many tools and techniques available to us, and we contribute to our product teams in many ways. However, while having good UX skills is necessary, it is not alone sufficient. No matter the size of our organizations or the domains we work within, our most valuable contributions are not our design or user research efforts. Rather, our most valuable contributions occur when we function as change agents.

I had fun writing. I hope you have fun reading it. The full article can be found here.

I’m happy to report that the publisher of “my” book “Usability Success Stories“, has lowered the price to US$60.00. With a 15% discount from purchasing via Gower’s web site, the price falls to US$51.00 plus shipping.

Yeeha.

You can click here to purchase it direct from Ashgate/Gower, or you can download the order form from this link.

(I put airquotes around “my” because I wrote 3 of the 10 chapters, edited the other contributors’ chapters, and produced or reworked the images and illustrations. So technically the book isn’t all mine. Just trying to avoid megalomania…)

I just found out that Gower has posted the first chapter of the book I edited.

The PDF of Chapter 1 can be found here: http://www.gowerpub.com/pdf/Usability_Success_Stories_Intro.pdf

I still don’t think you should buy it at 100+ dollars, though. (If you want to know why, you can read my rant.)

A few people have asked me about the presentations I gave at the User Friendly 2006 conference in Hangzhou, China earlier in November. If you’re one of them, or are just interested in seeing the PowerPoint decks, you can access them at this URL: http://www.usabilityblog.com/UF2006/.

The file starting with “Talk…” is the slide deck that accompanied my invited speaker talk. I presented about the project I led redesigning Peachtree Accounting’s user interface. Direct link is here.

The files starting with “Panel” are the slides and schedule for the panel I led, “Some Right - and Many Wrong - Ways to Incorporate Usability into an Organization.”

Enjoy.

I just looked at the sample chapters for The Usability Kit, a comprehensive resource for web site designers that explains critical usability concepts and also provides actual templates for common interactions such as login pages, help and FAQ areas, My Account pages, etc.

I really like it. It’s a great idea, and it appears to be very well executed. I downloaded the sample from SitePoint, the kit distributor, and the sample chapters read great. Dan Szuc and Gerry Gaffney cover all the right topics. I’m really glad they covered the critical information architecture concepts of faceted classification, tagging, and folksonomies.

Let me do the full disclosure thing at this point: I’ve known Dan Szuc for a few years now, and consider him a friend. And I’ve recently met Gerry Gaffney. So I’m not an impartial observer. However, I consider myself a reasonably ethical person, so if I didn’t truly feel that this resource was worth your time, I would say so. (Or more likely, I just wouldn’t blog it.)

By far the best thing about The Usability Kit is the blueprints. In providing what amount to templates for common interactions, Gerry and Dan have gone where many others fear to tread. Let’s face it: there’s only so many *good* ways to design a login box or a “Subscribe To Our Newsletter” form. And if I’m reading SitePoint’s blurb page correctl, you actually get electronic copies of the blueprints, so you can build pages from the templates. (I could be wrong about this; and besides, who builds sites with static HTML anymore? That’s so 1998…)

Unfortunately, the SitePoint sample didn’t include the chapter about user research. I am very particular about how user research is done, because I’ve seen so many ill-conceived, inefficient and biased user research projects performed by well-meaning people. So I can’t speak to how well Gerry and Dan covered this topic.

Bottom line: would I buy yet another *book* about usability for US$197? Frak no. Would I buy this kit, with all its templates and other goodies? Frak yes.

So you decide. Am I logrolling (or shilling), or pointing y’all to a quality resource?

As I continued browsing the Making Life Easy site, I stumbled across a picture of the low-flow toilet they praise as very usable.

I’m almost certain that this reaction is coming from my US-centric, don’t-like-to-think-about-or-acknowledge-bodily-functions cultural baggage…but does this particular potty make anyone else go “yuck!”?

I mean, I know intellectually that the water going into the toilet tank up top is as clean as the water coming out of a faucet tap, or for that matter, a drinking fountain. But there’s something skeevy about this design that adds up to a negative user experience for me.

I’m sure it’s a me thing…

Happy World Usability Day.

This event, now in its second year, was intended to raise awareness around the globe of how important usability is to our everyday lives. It’s succeeding beyond our wildest dreams. And that’s great.

But I’d like to introspect for just a moment here. Those of you who work in the field, stop and give yourself a mental pat on the back. And then tell yourself how fortunate you are to have stumbled upon a field that is so engaging, fulfilling, and exciting. Admit it. Every day when you wake up and go to work, you’re secretely thankful that you’re not a lawyer, a doctor, a software developer, and so on. You’re a soldier in the user experience army. And it’s the best damn career you can imagine.

You know it’s true. You tell yourself that at least once a week, don’t you?

I know *I* do…

There’s a very good article on voting, accessibility and usability over at UXMatters.

Whitney Quesenbery, former President of the Usability Professionals’ Association, describes her experiences serving on the Technical Guidelines Development Committee crafting standards for usable, accessible voting systems.

The article is at this URL: http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000136.php. Or follow this link. Enjoy.

World Usability Day 2006 is coming up fast. If you haven’t found an event to attend or participate in, go here to find an event near you.

This is looking to be the biggest World Usability Day ever. There’s going to be over 200 events in more than 35 countries. That’s big!

I guess books are like potato chips. It’s hard to stop at just one. I’m planning a second book about usability and user-centered design, and I’m looking for a few more people who are interested in contributing chapters. If you’re interested, contact me.

The book I am planning is a follow-on to the book that I just finished editing, “Usability Success Stories: How Organizations Improve By Making Easier-To-Use Software and Web Sites.”

I am planning a follow-on to Usability Success Stories because usability engineering and user-centered design are growing in importance worldwide. While the case studies in Usability Success Stories are quite compelling, all of the contributors are based in the US. (This was due to the fact that I had relatively few contacts outside the US when I began planning the book in 2002…)

I believe that the high-tech industry would benefit from hearing about the great work being done by usability and user-centered design practitioners around the globe, not just in the US. I am confident that there are many compelling stories to tell.

Like Usability Success Stories, the follow-on book will contain case studies of how user-centered design contributed to a successful outcome, be it a web site, software product, or hardware product. The authors will also explore the organizational factors that helped or hindered the application of UCD. Because this will be a collection of stories from different nations and cultures, I would also like the contributors to explore how their national or regional culture played a role - positive, negative, or a bit of both - in the success.

If you’re interested, let me know!

Gerry Gaffney of UXPod has posted a podcast of interviews with speakers and attendees of the User Friendly 2006 conference held last week in Hangzhou, China.

I was one of those interviewed. Listen to the podcast and marvel at my hybrid New Jersey-Texas accent. (People tell me I switch between “you guys” and “y’all” at random intervals. And you should see their eyes bug out when I say “fixin’ to”, as in “I’m fixin’ to go down to Katz’s Deli and pick up some bagels, would you like me to git you a bialy?”)

Short article about the conference and interviews is here. The podcast can be downloaded from this link.

Like any first-time author, I had been eagerly looking forward to my book finally coming to market. I’ve been working on it over a span of three years, so knowing that it was finally going to be available to the public has been an ongoing source of pride.

But instead of feeling pride and pleasure in my accomplishment, I feel shame and embarrassment.

Why?

The publisher has priced the book at ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN DOLLARS.

It’s just sillly. My book is a collection of case studies by user-centered design practitioners, tied together with introduction and concluding chapters where I discuss the organizational factors that help and hinder the creation of usable, useful products. Of course *I* think it’s a good book…but for frak’s sake it’s only 226 pages and 11 chapters long. I created the damn book and I DON’T EVEN THINK IT’S WORTH ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN DOLLARS.

I can’t imagine anyone else does either.

The fact is that the publisher has virtually ensured failure because they’ve priced the work far beyond what any reasonable person in our field is willing to pay.

You’re probably wondering whether I brought this up with them. In fact I did raise my concerns in August when I first noticed that the price was going to be set at $99.95. (Don’t ask me what caused the price to jack up 15 dollars; I haven’t a clue.)

In my discussion with the marketing head, he indicated that they typically set the price of their new works somewhat high, and gradually reduce them in response to market conditions. Since I am not a marketer, I figured that they must know what they’re doing.

But now that the book is actually available, it’s clear to me that this strategy will not be successful. As you probably know, many publishers and retailers provide notificaitions when books of potential interest become available. Several people have written to me over the past few weeks expressing various degrees of shock and chagrin at the price of Usability Success Stories. (You have no idea how crappy it feels to write back to these folks explaining that yes, I agree that it’s crazy, and no, I can’t do anything about it.)

The fact is the book is competing against works that are typically priced in the 30 to 50-dollar range. Who in their right mind would buy Usability Success Stories for $115 when they could buy the updated Cost-Justifying Usability for $59.00, Observing the User Experience for $34.00, Designing Interfaces for $32.00, or Designing for Interaction for $26.50?

The stunningly beautiful lake in Hangzhou.

Giles Colborne’s talk on building user communities.

The bicycles and scooters.

Dano and Jobot.

More as it occurs to me.

I am here in Hangzhou, China speaking at and attending the User Friendly 2006 conference, organized by UPA China.

The conference is a rousing success: more than 500 people from around the world are in attendance, and the program of events is top-notch.

Let me put that number in perspective for you. The “regular” UPA conference usually draws between 400 and 500 people. The ACM-SIGCHI conference sees a little over a thousand. Think about that: in only it’s 3rd year, User Friendly has already surpassed the attendance of the parent organization’s conference! That is impressive. Credit for building both the UPA China chapter and the User Friendly conference goes to the fine folks who founded and run the China chapter. They have truly done excellent work promoting usability and user-centered design concepts and techniques across China.

…this site: http://uxpod.libsyn.com/. Props to Gerry Gaffney for putting this together.

PC Magazine just gave Peachtree Accounting 2007 their Editors’ Choice award. Am I happy? Absolutely.

People who know me will know that I came to Sage Software in 2005 to lead the effort to redesign Peachtree Accounting’s user interface. The product, a small business financial management application that predates it’s 800-pound gorilla competitor QuickBooks, has never really been designed with any appreciable amount of user input. Throughout 2005, I and my very capable team of designers and researchers worked with over 150 users, using various methods, to redesign Peachtree’s navigation system, nomenclature, main screens and workflow.

The biggest challenge was striking the appropriate balance between what new users undoubtedly needed, and what the install base needed. As I’m sure you can imagine, people who’ve spent the time and energy learning a complex product do NOT like to have the rug pulled out from under them. So we not only paid attention to new designs; we attended to supporting existing methods of accomplishing tasks as well.

We still have a ways to go; this is a multi-year redesign. But to see the industry recognize our accomplishment is quite gratifying. Props to Matt Wallens, Stephanie Brawner, Darren Hauck, Cassandra Swint, and Amanda Nance for their contribution to this effort.

Click here to read the Peachtree Premium Accounting 2007 review by PC Magazine.

technorati tags:Peachtree, accounting, QuickBooks, software, financial

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I just heard that User Friendly 2006, sponsored by the China chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Association, has made its numbers. Which means I’m going to China.

Sweet…

I was invited to give a talk, run a workshop, and participate in a panel. I’m pretty excited. In graduate school I was fortunate to be able to travel to Central and South America multiple times, but I’ve never been to Asia. The furthest east I’ve been is probably Disneyland.

Remember that book I was working on?

I just found out it’s gone to the printer.

It’ll be available in five or six weeks.

I was fortunate to be asked to participate in my company’s press and analyst event in May of this year. For the main event, I put together a short presentation about the user-centered design program I built at Sage Software (the marketing folks sexed it up by labeling it “Customer-Connected Design”, which I’m fine with…)

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Don’t know if you use Wikipedia, but out of idle curiousity I browsed over to check out the entries for user-centered design and interaction design.

Not bad, but they could stand some improvement.

Anyone out there up to the task?

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I just read a post at IASlash about Chris Fahey’s series of articles at his site graphpaper.com that questions the usefulness of user research.

My first reaction was “This guy’s a nutcase.”

Then I read the first article, “User Research Smoke & Mirrors, Part 1: Design vs. Science.”

I don’t think he’s a nutcase. I do think he’s a provacateur with an incomplete understanding of the difference between science and scientific methods.

In general, the article is well-written, and the argument at first seems to hold water. But after considering Fahey’s points, I concluded that this was just another canard in the long-running pseudo-argument between design and usability/user research.

Here’s my main beef with the series:

1. Fahey seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between *science* and *scientific methods*. They are not synonymous. Science is the testing of a falsifiable theory by empirical, well-controlled experimental methods. The use of quasi-experimental methods in usability and user research is not science by any definition. But he consistently refers to it as such.

2. Fahey is not against user research per se. He’s against poorly done or misapplied user research. Well duh. Who’s not opposed to that? That’s like coming out against drunk driving or spitting in public. For this reason, his argument is mostly trivial.

This is not to say that *design itself* is trivial - far from it. I agree with Fahey when he says that research findings should not - in fact cannot - be translated easily into design. Design, like many creative endeavors, is an emergent phenomenon. You can’t map research directly to design.

Nonetheless, his argument is specious.

Like every other wanna-be semi-guru in this field, I’ve written a book. OK, I really just wrote three chapters, got 10 other people to contribute chapters, and edited their contributions…but still, I think this counts as “I have a book coming out.”

It will be available in September or October of this year. It’s published by Gower, an imprint of the Ashgate Publishing Group.
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Earlier this week I saw some postings on the usual listservs announcing the relaunch of usability.gov.

Check it out. It’s good.

Don’t forget, World Usability Day is November 14.

If you want to organize an event in your area, go to this page.

So here’s how this post started: I was intending to write a “roundup” piece touching on the various usability/user-centered design resources that were on the web and free for the taking. You know, like IBM’s Easy site, or Microsoft’s usability area. (I know they also have resources available on the MSDN site, but I couldn’t find them. MSDN.com doesn’t display right on my Mac…what a shocker…)

But when I got to this IBM resource, I just had to stop and post this as a standalone article.

IBM’s little ditty is called “EasyChart”, and it’s a teaching tool in application form. From the IBM site:

What is EasyChart? EasyChart is a charting tool that has been designed to purposefully violate well-known interface design rules of thumb (heuristics).

What is it used for? EasyChart is designed to demonstrate the effects of poor interface design has on the usability of an application or Web page.

Now this I *gotta* see. I can’t wait to download it to my PC.

The Usability Professionals’ Association 2006 conference ended two Fridays ago. The buzz in the halls was that it was a good conference.

The post-conference page is here.
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